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this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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I’m inclined to reframe this adage as rationality having a left-wing bias, since, y’know, reality is inherently unbiased. I realize I’m being somewhat pedantic though.
I get what you're saying, but I think "reality" actually works better.
Granted that reality is not a conscious agent and thus cannot itself be biased, the simple fact of the matter is that reality corresponds much more with left-wing pronciples and viewpoints than it does right-wing principles and viewpoints.
And yes - it can just as accurately be said that left-wing principles and viewpoints are more rational than right-wing, as demonstrated by the fact that they better accord with reality.
But that puts the focus on the person holding the view, and their rationality or lack thereof, and people (especially right-wingers) tend to dig their heels in when it's suggested that they're irrational, and their immediate tendency is to simply attack whoever makes that suggestion rather than actually considering the possibility.
By shifting the focus to reality itself, one is effectively saying, "Hey - don't look at me. If you have a problem with it, go take it up with reality."
I’m not quite as sure it can be said that any abstract ideas or viewpoints can be said to correspond with reality. There’s nothing to say that it’s the case for that as it is with the existence of gravity or the roundness of the Earth. It’d be just as valid for me to appeal to the divine right of royalty as a matter of fact and yet (hopefully) we all know how little weight that actually holds in any practical sense.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that reality isn’t something that can be bound to any one idea or perspective. Reality for, say, a cow is going to be a hell of a lot different from reality for any human being, and neither perspective is any more or less valid than the other. The fact that Humanity is still bickering among itself about the “right” religion and the “right” ideology I believe is proof enough of the nonexistence of any one objective truth when it comes to the things we believe in.
Most importantly though if we presuppose reality to have a bias of any kind then we’re still falling into the pit of human hubris that we’ve fallen into time and again throughout human history, and without a doubt still are. The universe doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to any one of our beliefs, and so when we make absurd leaps in logic based on them we’re setting ourselves up for damage and suffering far outweighing that which was ever necessary. The Crusades, Manifest Destiny, the Great Chinese Famine, the Holocaust… they were all caused at least on a psychological level through blind faith and uncompromising adherence to inherently fallacious ideas. At best there’s nothing productive about those beliefs, and at worst you get something like what I listed above.
I'm reminded of the anecdote of Samuel Johnson's reaction to the assertion that idealism could not be refuted - he kicked a large rock and said, "I refute it thus."
When I said that reality has a left-wing bias, I meant reality. Not the beliefs or subjective experiences that all too many erroneously promote to the position of nominal facts, but actual, demonstrable facts.
Like, for instance, vaccination prevents disease. Climate change is real. Doctors are not part of some international conspiracy to fool you into wasting your money while keeping you away from the miracle cure Ivermectin. Trump lost in 2020. Transgender people are going to continue to exist no matter what your personal opinion of the matter might be. Society is healthier, stronger and more stable when the gap between rich and poor is narrow and everyone is guaranteed food, shelter and medical care. And so on.
In all of those cases and many more, the left wing position corresponds with the actual, demonstrable facts, while the right-wing position does not.
That's exactly what I meant, and all that I meant.
Leftist beliefs align more nicely with reality as opposed to rightist beliefs, it doesn’t mean that reality itself adheres strictly to leftist beliefs. Reality governs itself independently of all thought, no matter what patterns and similarities we can interpret between the two. It would be far more appropriate to say that leftism has a reality bias as opposed to the other way around.